ECON*2100
Week 3 – Lecture 1
Resources Management and the
Economy
Resource Scarcity: A trick question
“
We have timber for less than thirty years at the
present rate of cutting... We have anthracite coal
for but fifty years, and bituminous coal for less
than 200. Our supplies of iron ore, mineral oil and
natural gas are being rapidly depleted, and many of
the great fields are already exhausted.
• In what year was this warning issued:
– 1973 ?
– 1961 ?
– 1935 ?
Resource Scarcity: A trick question
Gifford Pinchot, US Chief Forester
The Fight for Conservation
– 1910
We’re running out of food
“
Spaceship Earth is now filled to capacity or
beyond and is in danger of running out of food.
And yet the people traveling first class are,
without thinking, demolishing the ship’s already
overstrained life-supporting systems.
Paul and Anne Ehrlich, 1972
4
We’re at the limits of the Earth
“
Now as we look, we can see the limits of the
earth…If we are blind to this law, or delude
ourselves into minimizing its power, of one thing
we can be assured—the human race will enter into
days of increasing trouble, conflict and darkness.
Henry Fairfield Osborne, 1953
5
Modern Malthusianism
• Every 10 years or so we hear grave warnings
that we are facing ruin due to exhausted
supplies of resources and/or ecological ruin
• Why don’t we run out of resources?
Principles of Resource Management
• Non-renewable resources
– Hotelling rule
• Renewable resources
– Forests: Faustmann rule
Ideas in common
• A resource is like an asset with a potential
dollar value
• The crucial decision is when to convert it from
a physical asset to a financial asset
BANK
When to extract resource?
BANK
• Q tonnes of ore, could be sold for $P / tonne
• Once extracted it is worth $PxQ at today’s prices
• You can invest $PxQ and earn, say, 5% in the bank
• If the market price of ore goes up by 10%, you’d
have been better to leave it in the ground
Hotelling rule (mining)
• If you expect the resource value to go up faster than
the rate of return on financial investments, slow down
extraction
• If you expect the resource value to go up slower than
the value of financial investments, speed up extraction
Faustmann Rule (forestry)
• A forest adds q% to its wood volume each
year
• At first, q is very high, but as stand matures, q
drops to zero
• When q drops to the market interest rate, it is
time to cut the stand
“Proving Up” Reserves
• At any one time there are about 30 years worth
of proven oil reserves
• In addition, there are estimated and potential
reserves in many regions
“Proving Up” Reserves
• It is costly to go into new regions and do the
drilling required to “prove up” reserves
• Companies only invest in this activity up to the
point where the likely payoff is worth the cost
World Proved Oil Reserves
• Measured in years of current consumption
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
14
Suppose we are running short
• If the resource is in demand and supply shrinks,
the price will start rising
• Resource managers will slow down extraction
and keep more in the ground
• The upward swing in prices causes demand to
decline
• People curtail their use as much as possible
Suppose we are running short
Price
Quantity
• We expect to observe the price get higher and higher
• And as a result, quantity demanded gets lower and lower
• We never “run out”, it just gets too expensive for most
users
Institutions Matter
• Property rights
• Controlled access
• Stable planning climate
Property rights
• BC
– Forests publicly owned
– Large cutblocks, poorly-drained
roads, weak reforestation
• Washington
– Forests privately owned
– Smaller cutblocks, good roads,
intensive reforestation
Property rights
• Public forests in BC
– For many years, timber harvesting licenses were 5
years or shorter
– Companies doing the cutting had no financial stake in
the next generation’s forest
• Private forests in Washington
– Large companies like Weyerhauser have a permanent
interest in maintaining the productivity of their forest
– They benefit from doing a good job of cutting and
replanting
Property rights
• BC, 1990s
– Began move towards 30-year Tree Farm Licenses with automatic
renewals
– The aim is to give forest companies stable, long term interest in a
forest section so they expect to benefit if they do careful cutting and
replanting
– But it is politically difficult, and long term leases have actually declined
“The Tragedy of the Commons”
• What if no one owns a resource but everyone
can access it?
• This usually leads to over-exploitation
• Example:
– Ocean fisheries
“The Tragedy of the Commons”
• Everyone knows that they are over-exploiting the
resource, but no one has an incentive to stop
• Each captain thinks:
– If everyone else keeps harvesting and I stop, I lose out
and the fishery will be ruined anyway, so I am better
off harvesting
– If everyone else stops harvesting, my catch won’t
matter, so I am better off harvesting
“The Tragedy of the Commons”
• Either way I am better off taking the catch,
even if I know the fishery will be ruined
• Solution: mechanisms to control access
Stable planning climate
• “Sovereign risk”
– The fear that once a resource is developed, the
government will seize ownership
• Mining requires costly exploration and
development
• Equipment is also very costly
• Why bother if the government will seize or
block your mine before you can profit from it?
Summary
• Every decade we hear warnings of doom from
running out of resources
• Resources are managed as capital assets
– Rate of extraction is related to expected gain from
waiting, relative to expected gain from financial
investment
– We don’t “run out”, resource just gets too costly
• Exploration is costly, so industry only
maintains a 30-40 year supply
Summary
• Institutions matter:
– Property rights
– Tragedy of the Commons
– Sovereign Risk
Next
• Sustainability and substitution: The “Hartwick
Rule”